BlackBerry Z10: Not just a smartphone, a second chance (Video)

Six years ago Research In Motion dominated the United States mobile phone market — in the boardroom and the bedroom.

Today, the company’s U.S. market share has been picked clean like carrion on the African savanna.

It's taken half a decade, but Research In Motion, now referred to as BlackBerry (Nasdaq: BBRY), has finally come up with an answer to Google's Android and Apple’s iOS operating system.

That answer is a brand new operating system — BlackBerry 10 — and its flagship Z10.

On March 22, BlackBerry launched the Z10 in the United States, via AT&T (NYSE: T). Verizon and T-Mobile will also offer the phone. Sprint won't offer the Z10, but will offer Q10 model this summer.

Hardware

The broad-shouldered Z10 plays to its market. It’s understated, yet stylish in a corporate sort of way.

The front is mostly glass. The razor thin bezel along the sides does not sit flush with the screen, so you can feel when you hit the edge. The upside: the edges offer some protection to the non-Gorilla Glass screen, in case the device takes a tumble.

The Z10’s textured back cover is grippy and feels pleasant to the touch. The rubberish back keeps the device from sliding around on a table.

The gesture-centric Z10 is relatively free of physical buttons — just a volume rocker and standby button. The device has an elegant BlackBerry branding on the front. The wireless carrier branding has fortunately been relegated to the back.

However, it does have interesting time shifting technology — also available on Windows phones from Nokia, which acquired Scalado, the imaging company that developed the technology. Instead of snapping a single shot, the camera takes a series of photos (in under five seconds) of the scene. So, you can edit out the random guy walking in the background, or annoying photobombs.

The camera also includes Instagram-like filters. A good thing, since Instagram does not have a BlackBerry app, yet.

Software

The gesture-based BlackBerry 10 operating system is based on the QNX OS found on Blackberry's PlayBook tablet.

BB10 proves the redundancy of sticking with a physical "Home" button — something which Android also recognized, but Apple has not.

Swiping up on the screen unlocks the phone and reveals up to eight running applications that are displayed in a card-like interface. The apps can be launched full screen with a tap. Once unlocked, swiping to the left reveals three screens with icons laid out in a conventional 4 X 4 grid.

While Android and iOS adopted a swipe down motion to reveal notifications, BlackBerry went with the opposite direction. Swiping up on the screen anywhere in the interface slightly shrinks the running app and reveals email and notification counts on the left. Blackberry has branded that as the Peek feature.

There is no mail app in BlackBerry 10. Instead, BlackBerry has what it calls the Hub — a unified inbox that includes emails, social network updates, missed calls, text and BBM messages. Accessing the Hub involves swiping up on the screen and then right. Not exactly intuitive, but you get the hang of it pretty quick.

I get the logic of the highly customizable inbox, but the execution isn’t quite there. The inbox can get cluttered and overwhelming if you receive a ton of emails or Facebook and Twitter notifications. I also noticed bugs with syncing of Twitter notification.

Deleting emails from the inbox is tedious. The process requires holding down the email, until a pop-up menu appears on the right and then swiping down on the menu to delete. Not exactly elegant user interface design.

Like its competitors, BlackBerry 10 has a competent virtual assistant. Think Siri, without the sass.

BB10’s virtual keyboard is refreshing and roomy. It boasts a predictive touch keyboard that learns on-the-fly and suggests words on individual letters which can be inputed with an upward flick of the thumb. Swipe gestures also make it easy to delete words and sentences. I did however struggle with text highlighting.

In a nod to its enterprise roots, BB10 will allow users to maintain separate work and personal profiles —allowing you to play Angry Birds on the same device you use to download last month’s sales data.

This will go a long way in addressing the major frustration of carrying an office-issued BlackBerry and a “personal” Android or iPhone.

In today's world, mobile wars are not won on hardware, or even software, but in the app store.

BlackBerry says it will have 100,000 apps when it launches in the U.S. That's a pittance compared to the Android and iOS app ecosystem. As of this post, the BlackBerry store was missing popular apps, such as Netflix, Pandora and Flipboard.

Conclusion

BlackBerry has come out of the gate strong with refreshing software and hardware.

As a believer in second chances, I hope BlackBerry can pull off an Apple and become relevant again.